[Info-vax] kvm/qemu for OpenVMS ?

[I Kea]

it would have been really nice to have a "virtual box" for OpenVMS, it would
have allowed not to give up running its basic operating system, OpenVMS, and
at the same time to be able to run more recent Linux versions such as
NetBSD/vax 9.3 in the background. A VAX with only 32 MB of memory, maybe
even less, could easily take charge of one or more virtual machines inside it,
as far as CPU consumption is concerned I noticed that my VAX with OpenVMS
just loaded consumes 0% of cpu (according to MONITOR utility).

A test that I would like to do in the future, if I have time and just for
education and test purpose, is the reverse, and that is to try to install
OpenVMS inside a VAX where NetBSD/vax is already installed, but this was not the
original topic.

Naturally it is also possible to have a VAX with 2 internal disks, on one you
can install OpenVMS and on the other NetBSD/vax, from the prompt >>> one decides
which of the two RZ disks to boot. Once NetBSD/vax is started it may be possible
to browse (mount) the contents of the other disk where OpenVMS is installed
using the ODS-2 utilities, I don't know if they have been ported for NetBSD/vax
as well. And I don't know if the same thing can be done in reverse, ie being able
to read the contents of the other disk where NetBSD/vax is installed from the
other environment where instead we have just started with OpenVMS.

In any case, the fact that DEC had already thought about virtual machine concepts
in the 1980s ( VMM ) is further proof that they were already far ahead of
everyone at the time.